Get a Yahoo account and forward through them it can't be more than $10 a year and you would get instant e-mail. Just spoof the e-mail addy and your recipients will never see a difference.

that's the way to do it for your main account for sure! all is instant and no one knows the difference. I forward a Gmail account and use it in the reply to, rest of my e-mails(mobile me, yahoo) are regularly setup BIS and have near instant action anyway.

2.5 was last summer. I cant believe there isnt any development of BIS any time soon, not even rumours. RIM has to move a little faster with OS development and BIS/BES development. Many people are looking around to check the options on the market.

BES development is fine, 5.0 is out for that and as far as BIS, its has had two patches since 2.5 even if not everyone thinks they were major upgrades, but realistically its always going to lag behind the BES for the simple fact that they make money from the BES.

As far as OS developments, what I want to see from them are relevant changes e.g. improve the browsing experience and address memory issues to name a couple of clear areas of need and I am sure other people can name other things that are important to them.

From reading some posts/blogs you would think that rim were on their last legs due to hardware and software that nobody wants rather than increasing their own sales at recession-defying speeds and the only way they could save themselves would be to throw out all their existing stuff.

Ironically, so many that advocate such actions for rim are iphone fans when apple has also taken an incremental approach to improving the iphone's software and features.

From reading some posts/blogs you would think that rim were on their last legs due to hardware and software that nobody wants rather than increasing their own sales at recession-defying speeds and the only way they could save themselves would be to throw out all their existing stuff.

I think RIM needs to be rethinking it's strategy now. Not because it it in bad shape, not by a long shot, but because if it continues to squeak out small incremental upgrades, it is going to lose market share to a multi-carrier Android type offering. If they wait until they are losing market share to start a redesign, we'll see another Palm - where the company basically collapses and has to scrap everything to rebuild itself. The way I see it there are 5 real OS' on the market:

Blackberry
iPhone
Android (Google)
WebOS (Palm Pre)
Symbian

Pretty much everyone forgets Symbian, but they have the largest market share. As a result of being forgotten, they get fewer apps built for them, and lose "mind share" even though they retain market share. Right now, if I were RIM, I would be worried about losing the mind share battle to WebOS and Android (I think they already lost it to Apple). They need to have successful launches that bring something new to the game that will make Apple, Palm and Google struggle for 6-12 months to catch up. That's the stuff that drives mind share and eventually market share.

Their current strategy seems to be expand and upgrade their range to give their customers more choice of form factor and to steadily improve their software's appeal to new markets while not doing stuff that would alienate and throws away their existing customers.

What do you think they should change out of that?

You can always argue that they are not doing enough to expand their sales, but when their market share is actually increasing at a faster rate than that of Apple, it does seem to imply they are doing something right there too.

As I mentioned in my previous post the prime areas to improve are memory and browsing because the app store and browsing in general are consumer-orientated areas where they lag behind apple.

While never having used a Storm for more than a few minutes, I heard some real complaints about how the OS feels clunky with touch support slapped on - as opposed to WebOS, Android and iPhone. I think in general, BB OS feels older, and less functional than some of the newer OS'. If they want to design a phone that can compete with OS' that live online they may need to rethink everything from the home screen to the way the application switcher works to the way mail looks and feels.

I agree it's tough to do this without alienating the millions of business people out there that rely on BB on a daily basis, but it's a strategy they'll have to come up with.

Touch support slapped on is more than a little harsh, to me it looked like the design brief for the ui was for the device to still clearly be a blackberry first, but support the touchscreen properly and while I personally hate all touchscreen phones compared with a proper keyboard, they didn't do a terrible job and their virtual keyboards were some of the least annoying ones I have used.

In what ways is it actually less functional then?

I'll ignore the older part of the criticism since it has no actual relevance if the product is sound e.g. you don't hear cries for square wheels just because round wheels are an old shape.

Again, I haven't used a Storm for more than a few minutes, but it seems like WebOS (and iPhone) got a few things really right that BB would have to make work on their touch screen devices. I'm not sure which of these BB got working:

Application switching - WebOS uses "cards" which users can easily swipe through to see what they have open.

Corrective typing - iPhone does a surprisingly decent job with this. If you go quickly and miss a character by one key, it usually compensates. I've been fiddling around with my iPod Touch and I'm starting to get fairly fast with it. Of course I prefer a real keyboard, but I can get by without one thanks to great built in support. I bet some application of SureType would help BB level this playing field.

Gesture support - can I swipe through emails to get to the next one? Can I do that with notes, web pages, voice recordings and all other applications? Does it feel like gesture support is part of the OS, or merely a different way to interact with it?

Developer connection - I have no idea what platform is easiest to develop for, but Apple is winning this one because of sheer mass right now. The BB App store is a step in the right direction, but it needs to be implemented much better (not use PayPal for one - it's unprofessional). BB needs to make developers want to develop for the BB and not the iPhone. Part of this is tied directly into the sexiness of a NEW OS.

The BB may be your round wheel - without room for improvement - but to many others, the BB OS is a flat tire that does not have the capabilities of the new kids on the block.

Application switching has been a feature of the blackberry for ages, it was a hidden shortcut orginally and is now both a shortcut and a menu option nowadays.

Corrective typing - the blackberry already has some stuff like this on pearl and storm devices and presumably it is something they will improve still further in future products.

Gesture support - now personally I have never been a big fan of this stuff in programs or devices, but I can see its benefits and you would hope that rim will also introduce something along these lines to take advantage of the touchscreen, but equally this is simply a feature enhancement rather than a need to throw out their existing OS.

Developer connection - I think you have missed the crucial point about the success of apps on the iphone, they have not done well because of the "sexiness of a NEW OS" at all, they have done well because apple provided good support and more crucially a very good means of delivery.

Rim have been reasonably good at supporting developers in the past, but need to expand that support still further to also get the hobbyist coders involved as well because even if a lot more crappy apps will be developed you will also end up with those gems that you couldn't do without too.

However, without a centralised portal for easy access to applications it won't actually matter how many people start to develop for blackberries and it remains to be seen if the app store can be improved to the level it needs to be, as you say only accepting paypal is terrible move, ideally they would have their own payment processing system, but at the very least they should offer multiple payment options besides the dreadful paypal. The general usability of the app store needs to improve as well, but then again its not even available worldwide yet, so it's still a work in progress.

Quote:

The BB may be your round wheel - without room for improvement - but to many others, the BB OS is a flat tire that does not have the capabilities of the new kids on the block.

Where do I say or imply there isn't room for improvement, there are clear areas to improve and nobody would argue with that, my argument is with those who think that the only way things could improve is if they throw all the existing stuff and start from scratch because that can also lose you the loyalty of your existing customers.

Just look at some of the additions that apple made in their last updates, they were quite clearly aimed at the business sector and I am sure they would be delighted to hear if Rim took their eyes of that market to chase others.

If Rim is to keep expanding then they need to bring out new hardware and improved software that appeals to their existing customers while also appealing to the customers of their rivals (symbian is still the world leader even if it is steadily losing market share) and also to appeal to people moving into the smartphone market who had previously bought ordinary mobiles instead and they don't need to throw away what they have to do this.

Indeed, nobody is claiming blackberries are perfect and should stay the way they are now, its merely the characterisation in same areas that they are so flawed that only a complete rebuild from the ground up that seems so out of whack with the reality of the situation for them.

To be honest, I really feel that blackberry is doing as well as they are is a result of the fact that we are still in the "zomg smart phone is so much better than regular phone" phase. Once that has slowed down and most people are using smart phones, RIM will slow down quite a bit if they don't start adding features and improving/changing/allowing more customization of the OS. The actual feature set changes from phone to phone, OS to OS, are few and far inbetween. Have we really seen significant user feature changes since the inception of the Curve?

I cannot help but think that RIM really missed the boat with IMAP4, yes it is not as prevalent as Exchange (which BES handles nicely), but it is used by businesses as well as consumers.

My employer has been using IMAP4 for many years now and we are very happy with its performance. We have evaluated Exchange over the years, if for not other reason than to give our mobile employees an email solution that works out in the field on a handheld device.

It seems that Palm's WebOS is the first OS in a long time that supports IMAP4 fully. We are patiently waiting for Palm to release a GSM version and then we are going to evaluate it as our mobile email solution (as it does not require any further changes server side).

However, we would very much like to utilize a Blackberry solution as their handheld devices are so much easier to type on than almost any other device in creation. I have touched a PRE and the keyboard leaves a lot to be desired.

I cannot believe that RIM has not either added IMAP4 support to their BES suite of products (in which case we would go that route) or provide robust support for IMAP4 through their BIS product.

I like to think that I know a little bit about blackberrys (mostly from this forum), but I have no idea how to check which version of BIS I am running, or how to get the most updated version...I know this isn't the most appropriate place to pose this question, but if anyone could lend a hand, I would really appreciate it. I would really like to make sure that I have the most up-to-date BIS version. BTW, I have an 8830 running v4.5.0.138 on Verizon (and I can't wait to get the Tour this weekend!)